April 14, 2004
Now You're Speaking My Language . . .?
So, I go to Chapel this morning. I think I might know someone who has something to say about the experience as a whole, but I would like to address Praise & Worship, specifically, myself.
For those of you who weren't there, we had the Hispanic crew in charge today, and we did one song in Spanish at the beginning. I believe this has happened twice before this semester. The last time we did this, as I recall, all of the songs were in Spanish. I had a bit to say about that at the time, but no one else seemed to care, so I left it alone. After all, I personally ought to have no complaint, right? I speak Spanish fluently, I know exactly what I'm singing, and I didn't even need to have the words up there for me. (This is fortunate since they weren't up there for a significant portion of the song).
Today, we were very slowly led through the lyrics of the song, line by line, in classic repeat-after-me fashion, before they put them up on the screen (which irritated me, because I'm just impatient like that . . . and the song is supposed to be really fast, it's quite annoying when you go crawling through it). Then, when we were actually singing, whoever was working the slides was totally off (I mean, duh. They probably don't speak Spanish . . . we couldn't think of this beforehand?) and so no one could read the words because they weren't up on the screen. At one point, they just turned the projector off completely. The result is 750-odd people, say, tripping and stumbling painfully through a song they don't understand (even when they're actually able to sing along). It didn't flow. It didn't set a mood. It didn't unite. It didn't work.
Can anyone explain to me the point of singing praise & worship songs in a language that the majority of the people in the room do not understand, let alone speak? I mean, really . . . You don't know what you're singing! What if you were talking about "dancers who dance upon Your justice," or some such nonsense, without even knowing about it?! Then, if the words don't stay up you can't even follow along anyway. Plus, I don't know about the rest of you, but it would be bothersome and distracting to me to have to sing in, say, French, and know that I was butchering the pronunciation horribly . . . *sigh* It's just . . . No.
I know where this is coming from . . . it's that whole "showing how diverse we can be" thing that was mentioned in the last issue of the paper. And that's just fine and dandy, but . . . No. Now, perhaps if there were people in the room who didn't know English, (aside from the obvious, "What are they doing there?" question), then it would seem vaguely reasonable to do this from time to time. But there aren't.
I think it would be quite cool to give them a whole Chapel, maybe once per semester, all to themselves. Have it on the Chapel schedule. Call it "Alabando al Seņor," or something like that, let us know it's coming, and don't make it "mandatory" to sing along. It would be more like going to a concert, I suppose. It's them, onstage, sharing their culture and language with us through music, and audience members who wish to sing with them are quite free to do so. That would be sweet. And if done properly it would be quite worthwhile.
And while you're at it, promoting diversity and whatnot, here's a thought: I'm pretty sure there are more Koreans here than Hispanics, (I dunno, maybe not . . . there are quite a few, at least), why don't we ever see them onstage, singing in Korean? It just seems odd to me that admin won't shut up about diversity, but their efforts in that direction seem so limited, missing wide swathes of the population . . .
Whatever. That's just what I, as a somewhat interested party with a unique perspective, think about the whole thing. Discuss.
Posted by Jared at April 14, 2004 03:06 PM | TrackBack